A new paper by ILRI describes new scientific tools and platforms to tackle new issues emerging in collaborative livestock research for development.
The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) recently reviewed its strategy, evolution and research agenda. The resulting paper, Knowledge to Action—Strategy and Future Directions of ILRI, answers four questions:
- What is ILRI doing and why does it matter?
- How is ILRI responding to dynamic livestock, science and development environments?
- What are the future research directions and frontiers for ILRI?
- Why invest in international livestock research?
This analysis included an assessment of ILRI’s achievements over the past five years: ILRI’s Achievements: 2000–2006.
Dynamic growth of the livestock sector in the developing world is creating new opportunities. The challenge is to use the ‘livestock revolution’ driver to achieve pro-poor growth. Rapidly changing consumer demands, expanding markets for livestock products, changing food quality and safety demands, new technologies, and institutional innovations such as the supermarket revolution all create both opportunities and challenges for reducing poverty through livestock interventions.
ILRI’s Knowledge to Action paper describes the evolution of ILRI’s research program, new directions for each of the institute’s five research themes, and research areas ILRI and its partners recently established to address global issues such as emerging and zoonotic diseases, increasingly stringent food quality and safety standards, and the environmental impacts and trade-offs of changing livestock systems. ILRI and its partners are developing research platforms to enable all stakeholders in livestock development to apply the tools of new science and technology in pursuit of a shared livestock-research-for-development agenda.